Avangrid merger would be bad for New Mexico
Too many elected leaders revealed themselves to be puppets of corporations in the last legislative session. Industry has bought our politicians and peddled misleading propaganda, pushing false solutions to the climate crisis — like hydrogen, which poses considerable risks to our communities.
Extraction is not a viable future given the climate crisis. New Mexico has a long history of corporations taking advantage of us, especially the fossil fuel and nuclear development industries.
Corporations ignore the symbiotic relationship between Indigenous people and the environment. We have been fighting environmental destruction for 500 years, and now it affects people everywhere.
A former coal plant near the town of Prewitt is being converted to a hydrogen plant using fracking water, which risks hazardous land, air and water contamination. It’s part of a devastating cycle that harms front-line people. It’s violence against our Earth and our communities. It perpetuates the loss of our traditional ways of life, which is another form of genocide.
Corporate behemoth Avangrid/Iberdrola’s potential takeover of PNM is worrying. Iberdrola is valued at $160 billion, bigger than the gross domestic product of countries like Ukraine, Kuwait or Costa Rica. How can New Mexico regulate a corporation this massive?
Investigations into Iberdrola/ Avangrid subsidiaries show how difficult it can be to hold them accountable. Iberdrola has been fined and sanctioned in many of the states and countries they operate in, but the corporation does everything it can to evade responsibility and appeal these decisions.
Calls for publicly owned power are growing in many of the areas where Avangrid-owned utilities operate. Mexico recently purchased Iberdrola assets to stabilize utility pricing for their residents.
Avangrid/Iberdrola is bad. Where it operates, we find corruption, service issues, rate increases, billing issues, contract breaking, corporate spying, coordinated PR campaigns and political contributions to influence the regulatory environment.
They obstruct efforts to advance community-owned renewable power, and they would do that here, too.
PNM is dysfunctional, but Avangrid/Iberdrola is far worse. It’s concerning that Avangrid funded multimillion-dollar misinformation campaigns to oppose climate legislation in New York and anti-solar advocacy in Maine.
The urgency of the climate crisis demands immediate action. Massive corporations that want to extract our resources, our wealth, and use us to further monopolize our utility sector won’t take the action we need, but the people will.
Krystal Curley, Rayellen Smith and Jay Levine are members of Public Power New Mexico, a grassroots statewide organization working to advance community-owned renewable power. Curley directs Indigenous Lifeways, Smith is with Indivisible Albuquerque, and Levine is from Renewable Taos.